On November 30, 10 teams will square off in the Battle of the Innovators, the final phase of the first-ever Defence Team Innovation Challenge.

After making it through the rigorous evaluation process of 172 submissions, the finalists will face off in front of a panel of 5 judges made up of senior leadership to compete for $1 million in funding towards implementing their idea.

The innovations being presented include pilots, proof of concepts, and roll-outs of:

• An approval management system to modernize processes and authorizations with digital signatures;
• Renewable energy designed for High Arctic and other deployed and offline environments;
• A common unified and secure access card;
• A knowledge management system to improve search of policies, CANFORGENS, lessons learned, etc. across our systems to more quickly find relevant and helpful results;
• A nerve agent test system to provide immediate assessment of contamination;
• Primary Reserve information management system and mobile app;
• Military working dogs and handlers;
• Web portal for cadets and their parents to improve data quality and access;
• 3D Printing for parts and equipment; and
• A tool to fully automate the processing of DWAN user account requests, deployments, postings, extended leaves, and releases.

The event takes place on November 30 from 1:00-3:30 p.m., and will be broadcast live within the National Capital Region (NCR) and at select locations across Canada via video teleconference (VTC). Don’t worry, if you can’t tune in on November 30, a recording of the event will be made available in December.

For more information, visit the Defence Team Innovation Challenge GCpedia page (internal link).